My Name Is America Books in Order

My Name Is America is the companion series to Dear America. The idea is similar: each book is written as the journal of a fictional young person living through a major moment in American history. The main difference is that this series centers boys’ voices, often in settings tied to exploration, war, migration, labor, or settlement.

Ann Rinaldi’s contribution is The Journal of Jasper Jonathan Pierce.

The book follows Jasper, a fourteen-year-old indentured servant, as he crosses the Atlantic on the Mayflower and lives through the early months of Plimoth Plantation in 1620 and 1621. The journal form keeps the story close to practical daily problems: hunger, cold, work, fear, illness, status, and the awkward business of trying to survive in a place that is not yet home.

Jasper is not one of the powerful adults making decisions for the colony. That is the point. His position as an indentured servant gives the story a useful angle on class and dependence. He has to work, obey, watch, and make sense of the adults around him. He is close to the founding story of Plymouth, but he experiences it from below rather than from a famous leader’s chair.

The series is built for readers who like a clear historical frame and a personal voice. Because the books are journal-shaped, events unfold in pieces. A storm, a quarrel, a shortage, or a meeting with Native people can feel immediate rather than summarized. That makes the books accessible for younger readers who may not want a dense historical novel but still want a strong sense of period.

Rinaldi’s Jasper book also fits her larger pattern. Again, she is interested in a young person near a famous event, trying to understand rules that are not fully explained. The Mayflower story can be told as a national myth, but here it becomes a daily struggle through the eyes of a boy whose future depends on other people’s choices.

Readers should bring context here too. Plymouth stories involve Native history, colonization, and survival on both sides of contact, and no single fictional diary can carry all of that weight. Still, as part of Rinaldi’s bibliography, The Journal of Jasper Jonathan Pierce is a useful, compact entry point into her interest in young narrators living inside complicated beginnings.